Calvin Coolidge was the thirtieth President of the United States and was in office from 1923 until 1929. He was a Republican and fiercely conservative in his views and policies. Coolidge inherited an administration that was tainted by the scandal of the Harding administration, so he was tasked with restoring integrity to the government. He became popular and presided over the majority of the ‘Roaring Twenties’.

Calvin Coolidge’s Background

Coolidge was born on 4 July 1872 in Plymouth, Vermont. His parents instilled in him the puritan values that would characterise Coolidge’s political career: honesty, reserve, virtue, thrift, and industry.

Fig. 1 - The Cooling Homestead, also known as the Coolidge House. This was the childhood home of Calvin Coolidge and where he took his presidential oath. The home is located in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, and Coolidge lived here from 1876, when he was four, to 1887.

He graduated from Amherst College with an honours degree in law and began practising in 1897 in Massachusetts. Almost simultaneously, Coolidge entered politics. He became a councilman in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1898. In 1905, he married Grace Anna Goodhue, who was a teacher for deaf people; they would go on to have two sons.

Fig. 2 - Calvin Coolidge during his time as a college student at Amherst College.

Coolidge methodically climbed the political ladder, holding positions in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1906-09), as Mayor of Northampton (1910-12), in the Massachusetts senate (1912-15), as Lieutenant Governor (1916-19), and as Governor of Massachusetts (1919-21), before entering the federal government.

In 1919, Coolidge was cast into the spotlight for his decision to send the state guard to restore order during a strike by the Boston police for better pay and working conditions. Leaders of the labour union asked Coolidge to support rehiring police officers that had been fired for striking but he refused. In response, he said:

Calvin Coolidge as the thirtieth US President

Calvin Coolidge was chosen as the running mate of Senator Warren Harding of Ohio in the 1920 presidential election. Harding won the election with a huge landslide of 61% of the popular vote, having campaigned on the promise of a ‘return to normalcy’ after the First World War and the reform policies of the Progressive Era.

Coolidge served as Harding’s Vice President until Harding died unexpectedly in 1923, making Coolidge President.

As the Republican candidate in the 1924 election, Coolidge ran on the slogan ‘Keep Cool with Coolidge’ and won a landslide victory in his own right. The election of 1924 has been said to be the high point of conservatism in the United States, as both the Republican and Democratic candidates campaigned on conservative principles.

Fig. 3 - Calvin Coolidge.

What was Calvin Coolidge like as president?

Warren Harding’s administration was exposed as being involved in a number of scandals. Coolidge, therefore, inherited a government that the people did not have faith in, but he quickly set about fixing this.

The most notable scandal was the Teapot Dome oil-lease scandal, and Coolidge appointed a counsel specifically to investigate this, as well as dismissing Harry M Daugherty, Harding’s corrupt attorney. He quickly regained the faith of the American people and became respected. Coolidge was also known as a man of few words and earned the nickname Silent Cal.

He was dedicated to maintaining what he referred to as ‘a state of contentment seldom before seen’ in America and epitomised the laissez-faire style of government. Businesses were allowed to grow freely under his administration, and he famously said:

Accomplishments of the Calvin Coolidge administration

Coolidge’s accomplishments while in office included reducing government debt from over $22 billion to under $17 billion by 1929, reducing unemployment, reducing the federal budget, and reducing taxes.

A key figure in the Coolidge administration was Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, who served under all three presidents of the 1920s to oversee conservative economic policies.

Domestic policy

Key pieces of domestic legislation passed by his administration included the following.

• The Indian Citizenship Act (1924) gave citizenship rights to the Indigenous Peoples of America.
• The Immigration Act (1924) restricted immigration from parts of Europe and Asia.
• The Revenue Acts (1924 and 1926) reduced inheritance and personal income taxes.
• The Radio Act (1927) created the Federal Radio Commission to regulate radio communications.

Perhaps more notably than legislation passed was legislation vetoed by Coolidge. In 1924, he vetoed the Veterans Bonus Bill which would give compensation to First World War veterans for their loss of earnings whilst at war. This veto was later overridden by Congress but is a key example of Coolidge’s laissez-faire beliefs.

He also vetoed the McNary-Haugen Bill twice, in 1927 and 1928. The bill proposed to have the federal government purchase surplus crops from farmers in order to alleviate their economic troubles, but Coolidge’s veto again reflects his laissez-faire policies.

Although he was fiercely conservative in his economic views, Coolidge held some progressive social beliefs. He spoke out subtly against the terrorist white-supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan, supported women’s suffrage, and gave citizenship to Indigenous Peoples. He was also hesitant about signing the 1924 Immigration Act.

Foreign Policy

Calvin Coolidge was not overly interested or involved in international affairs. He was neither isolationist nor interventionist, leaving US involvement in world affairs largely up to members of his administration. He did, however, strongly oppose US membership in the League of Nations.

In 1924, the Dawes Plan was introduced to give long-term loans to Germany as they struggled to pay their war reparations to Britain and France. As Britain and France then used this money to pay back war debt to the US, this program – named after Vice President Charles Dawes – benefitted American bankers.

In 1928, Calvin Coolidge signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which outlawed war as foreign policy. It was signed by the US, France and 12 other nations and was named after Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and the French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand. Both Charles Dawes and Frank Kellogg won a Nobel Peace Prize for their work on international affairs.

The US remained heavily involved in Latin American countries during Coolidge’s time in office. Investments rose from $1.26 billion in 1920 to $3.52 billion in 1928, tipping the economies of these countries to the United States.¹ Coolidge travelled to Cuba in 1928 to address Latin American leaders and the Coolidge administration recognised the need for change in how the US engaged with the rest of the Western Hemisphere, although no concrete action was taken.